To the Muse Erato

Well Hello again Folks.

An injury to my foot and the pressure of other activites have slowed me down and I was not able to come up with a post for awhile. So I was unable to prepare anything for Father's Day, but the Cosmos works in very strange ways. My very good friend, Darlene, sent me an email with a poem which I will share with you. This is a poem which I am sure some of you may have seen before with the usual message to send it to so many people and good luck will follow. So I neglected to file it among the many items that were keepers for follow up later. Then stimulated by my travels through the world of poetry I found that my attraction for poetry extended to a piece that (1) rhymed and (2) told a story or had a moral as such. So fortunately out of the invisible world of the internet came another chance to capture this very moving poem. If anyone knows the author, I would certainly like to know.

So I dedicate this offering to all the Fathers who were once sons too. And of course to the daughters as well since they too represent the bloodline. Enjoy it as I did and if by chance it does bring a tear to your eye.... then maybe there is hope for you yet.

Author Unknown, title unknown...

A drunk man in an Oldsmobile they say had run the light

That caused the six-car pileup on 109 that night.

When broken bodies lay about and blood was everywhere,

The sirens screamed out eulogies, for death was in the air.

A mother trapped inside her car was heard above the noise;

Her plaintive plea near split the air, "Oh, God, please spare my boys."

She fought to loose her pinned hands, she struggled to get free.

But mangled metal held her fast in grim captivity.

Her frightened eyes then focused on where the back seat once had been.

But all she saw was broken glass and two children's seats crushed in.

Her twins were nowhere to be seen, she did not hear them cry.

And then she prayed they'd been thrown free, "Oh God don't let them die".

Then Firemen came and cut her loose, but when they searched the back,

They found therein no little boys, but the seat belts were intact.

They thought the woman had gone mad and was traveling alone.

But when they turned to question her, they discovered she was gone.

Policemen saw her running wild and screaming above the noise

In beseeching supplication, "Please help me find my boys."

They're four years old and wear blue shirts, their jeans are blue to match.

One cop spoke up, "they're in my car and they don't have a scratch."

They said their Daddy put them there and gave them each a cone.

Then told them both to wait for mommy to come and take them home.

"I've searched the area high and low, but I can't find their dad.

He must have fled the scene, I guess, and that is very bad."

The mother hugged the twins and smiled, while wiping at a tear.

"He could not flee the scene you see for he's been dead a year.

The cop just looked confused and asked, "Now how can that be true?"

The boys just said "Mommy, Daddy came and left a kiss for you.

He told us not to worry and that you would be all right.

And then he put us in this car with the pretty flashing light.

We wanted him to stay with us because we miss him so,

But Mommy, he just hugged us tight and said he had to go.

He said someday we'd understand and told us not to fuss.

And he said to tell you Mommy, he is watching over us."

The mother knew without a doubt that what they spoke was true.

For she recalled their Dad's last words, "I will watch over you".

The Fireman's notes could not explain the twisted mangled car.

And how the three of them escaped without a single scar.

But on the cop's report was scribed in print so very fine,

"An Angel walked the beat tonight on Highway 109.

If I dood it... I get a whipping. I dood it.

In the words of the immortal Baby Snooks " If I dood it I get a whipping... I dood it."  Out of the vast past, back in the days of radio even, came a lesson perhaps we should all take to heart.  As I said before in my posts, we were born with two things in common.  Every human being was born naked.  And they were born with the ability to choose for better or worse.  So on this Sunday evening I reflect on the choices I made over the years.  In baseball when you hit a foul ball you get a chance for another swing, but in golf when you hit it off the course you have to play your mistake as it lies.  But as I have come to believe, everyone chooses the best they can based on the experience that they have at that time.  And that is what builds what we call maturity.

Anyway, since I chose to agree to attend a class in poetry, I thought that I might write about choice.  Now this will never win a Pulitzer prize, but it does rhyme and it has a halting but noticeable meter. 

The gist of the poem is that we are born with choice even if one of the options is death.  Which reminds me of my Sicilian heritage.  I tell people that we are extremely reliable and "when we give our word you can count on it.... even when we say that we are going to kill you".  So choice is hard-wired into the human psyche and perhaps the proper way to handle it is to always make a choice for better or worse and never look back except to incorporate it as part of experience.

And with that.. here is my burnt offering to the muse Erato.

                                   Choice 

As you go thru life brother, you will come to a fork in the way

Will it be pleasure or strife brother, only you can say. 

Original sin was also a choice as the snake was heard to say.

Live in bliss or see the light and I will show the way. 

That sneaky snake never said a word about our free will.

As that first delicious bite doomed us to this day still. 

So make your choice brother whether blessing or a curse

Because we took that bite  back then brother for better or for worse. 

You must turn left or you must turn right there is no other way

Was it a good choice or a bad choice, only you can say.

Are we there yet

Ah yes.. it has been awhile since the last time the walrussez...  A number of things needed attention.  Barbara and I decided to take a class in poetry.  Yes I said poetry.  Along with the usual minutiae of everyday living we decided to go back to school.  That, along with preparing the necessary slides for a class in Astrology that I will present at the Chester County Night School, has kept me busy busy busy.  But all these activities served to center my buttoned-down mind on my favorite subject, science.  So while the instructor was extolling the virtues of free verse, which conflicted with my expectations of rhyme and rhythm as in "Jack and Jill went up the hill" and "There once was a man from Kent" I got a sense that I was watching a transition.

The world was speeding up.  The old leisurely rhythms and frequencies were being replaced by the younger generation speaking at a faster pace.  They were using a language that didn't make sense to me like OMG and BTW and LOL.  They were texting at a rate that was impossible for human fingers to perform.  And they were doing it everywhere.
The public was looking for convenience and I don't mean only in the foods they eat.  Cars that park themselves, 3G and 4G networks that promised greater speed and ease of communication everywhere one went.   And all of a sudden it hit me.  We are in the Quantum Age.

 And how can you say that is so?  Just look at how we passed through the Atomic Age.  When the atomic bombs rained death and destruction on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end WW II, that was not the beginning of the Atomic Age.  The Atomic Age began when the Greeks first conceived of a particle so small and so fundamental as the atom.  The Race has added to that conception piece by piece over the millennia until shortly after WW I even, the Germans came very close to unleashing the power of the atom before it was actually done underneath the football stadium at the University of Chicago.

The Quantum Age perhaps was started by Alfred Einstein himself when he got the Nobel prize not for his great mathematical contributions to the laws of gravity and the like but for an experiment he ran on the power of light.  Einstein and his team focused an intense beam of light onto the surface of a platium sheet and kicked an electron out of one of the platinum atoms on that surface. This experiment more than any other was the flag-bearer for the quantum scientists when they realized two things.  One that the Experimenter was not only able to observe the experiment but to participate in it by changing the properties of that electron.  And two, to do it at a distance.  So now our worldview changed from an objective functioning to one of a subjective function.  And this, folks, was perhaps about 100 years ago.  So now there is more substance to that old piece of advice... "we create our own reality".

Perhaps if there is enough interest we can continue in this vein in the next installment.  Oooops oh yeah my first burnt offering to the muse Erato..  originally titled "Time Travel" has been re-named..."The Phantoms of My Mind".


                                   The Phantoms of My Mind


I toss and turn, I cannot sleep, I wrestle with the phantoms of my mind.
The things i did of yesteryear, were they reality?
Or were they just shapes and wisps of fog and shreds of memory?
Did I say this , did I do that as I go back in time?
And every night I lay me down with the phantoms of my mind.
Now all were not shadowy, the things that I had done.
Nor did every battle give me reason to atone.
As my black horse gallops through the halls of space and time,
And every night I battle with the phantoms of my mind